Posts Tagged: Jonathan Trott

0England and Wales Cricket Board logoA game of nerve?

It’s that time again — the nights are long, the air is cold, but soon the radio will fire into life and bring the sounds of Aus­trali­an sum­mer to our ears. Will Eng­land come back from the pre­vi­ous white­wash with a win (as they did in 2010-11, or will Aus­tralia com­plete a 3rd white­wash in 4 series. I for one am bet­ting it won’t be a draw!
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0England in need of Moore summer class

Apo­lo­gies one and all for a lack of recent mus­ings – it’s all due to a new arrival in the house­hold which has meant my wak­ing (and sleep­ing) hours are com­pletely dom­in­ated by bottle feed­ing ses­sions and nappy changes – yes a little bambino has arrived. Give her about 18 years and she’ll be play­ing for England.
Any­way; to business.
Well, to para­phrase Wil­li­am Shakespeare some­what, that was a winter of dis­con­tent for Eng­land. After pretty inept per­form­ances in the Ashes most would have thought it couldn’t get any worse. It did – the humi­li­at­ing defeat against the Neth­er­lands (even if it was a ‘dead rub­ber’) prov­ing the coup de grâce. Before and since that final sham­bol­ic out­ing there have been some high pro­file cas­u­al­ties — gone are coach Andy Flower, middle order main­stay Jonath­an Trott and spin king Graeme Swann. And then of course there is the whole saga around Kev­in Pietersen. Glove­man Matt Pri­or will also be nervously look­ing over his shoulder as oth­ers threaten his place in the side.… Read Full Article

0Australia steam on in battle against Proteas

When Eng­land squared up to Aus­tralia in the last Ashes series I, like many, thought the vis­it­ors would retain the urn dur­ing the five match series. It was always going to a tough­er battle than the sum­mer show­down but vic­tory was expected.

Play­er for play­er Eng­land were just too strong, weren’t they? At the time, with the standout excep­tion of middle-order maes­tro Michael Clarke, a com­bined XI of the two sides would have been dom­in­ated by the three lions. Oth­er than skip­per Clarke who would have made the com­bined side? Per­haps Dav­id Warner for Michael Car­berry? A fit Ryan Har­ris in for either Chris Trem­lett or Tim Bresnan? Cer­tainly the former, prob­ably the lat­ter. A place for Shane Wat­son? Maybe – but who would he replace? On the face of it, how­ever, Eng­land cer­tainly appeared the stronger out­fit.… Read Full Article

0Ashes to Ashes, England to Dust

For what I am about to say may I be struck down from above…but I am glad that this Ashes series is at an end. Quite simply Aus­tralia have played far bet­ter than the sum of their indi­vidu­al parts and Eng­land have been, for the large part, abso­lutely diabolical.

As sure as night fol­lows day the Aus­sies wrapped up a dev­ast­at­ing 5–0 series win, yet again bowl­ing Eng­land out for a piti­ful total not worthy of an inter­na­tion­al line up. The vis­it­ors now need to go back, re-group and pick up the pieces from this poten­tially dis­astrous tour down-under.… Read Full Article

0Australia Boxing Clever

Eng­lish win­ters are a ter­rible thing. Cold and wet, the sea­son also means no home crick­et whatsoever.

Christ­mas is one shin­ing light in the fog of the cold and to add to this the thought of an annu­al test match that starts on Box­ing Day and usu­ally held under blue skies and warm tem­per­at­ures is one that stirs the ima­gin­a­tion and one that I will raise a cold beer to.

Box­ing Day tests have been held every year since 1980 (except 1989 when a one day match vs Sri Lanka was played instead (boo – ed) and at the Mel­bourne Crick­et Club in Aus­tralia – aka the MCG). They have also been dom­in­ated by some massive crowds (which have approached six fig­ures on occa­sion).… Read Full Article

0Graeme Swann announces immediate retirement

Amongst the wreck­age of the Ashes tour comes anoth­er seis­mic bomb­shell — the best Eng­lish spin­ner in a gen­er­a­tion has handed his tick­et in.

Yes it’s true — Graeme Swann has announced his imme­di­ate retire­ment. What a massive loss. Swann was a great play­er, com­pet­it­or, fight­er and all-round team man. He could even hold a bat the right way round.

Hav­ing taken 255 wick­ets in his test career at a shade under 30 a piece, his record is there for all to see and it’s going to be very hard to replace him. As always with Eng­land there’s hardly a queue of spin­ners banging down the door to take his place in the side. So does that mean we go back to the days of only ever pick­ing a twirler when the pitch suits rather than a first choice?… Read Full Article

0Australia urn their easy Ashes victory

With a ruth­less determ­in­a­tion and a killer instinct worthy of a wolf chas­ing a wounded deer, Aus­tralia duly com­pleted the rout of a demor­al­ised Eng­land this morning.

Eng­land simply haven’t turned up this series and a reju­ven­ated Aus­tralia have preyed on every weak­ness and every fail­ing to humi­li­ate what is still a pretty good side.

Win­ning a fourth con­sec­ut­ive Ashes series was a pretty tall order and it was one that was bey­ond Eng­land. The urn now returns to Aus­tralia (fig­ur­at­ively speak­ing, any­way!) and we no doubt won’t hear the end of it from our cous­ins on the oth­er side of the planet.

As Cook admit­ted in his post-match press con­fer­ence, Eng­land have been out­played in all areas and will, I sus­pect, claim a 5–0 tri­umph. It’s simply not their style to take their foot off the gas. The wolf has caught the prey, now he wants to fin­ish every last tasty morsel.… Read Full Article

1The Ashes urnAustralia hold the upper hand — in a dead rubber match

Two days in and Aus­tralia cer­tainly have the upper hand. But so what. The Ashes are won and won pretty con­vin­cingly at that. This is a dead-rub­ber match and is very remin­is­cent of Ashes series of old when Eng­land used to sud­denly pull a decent per­form­ance out of the hat when the urn was in the pos­ses­sion of the Aus­sies. Play­ers who time and time again let the team down would sud­denly grab a five-for or score a cen­tury and their series aver­age to the his­tor­ic observ­er would look half-decent.… Read Full Article

0The Ashes urn3–0 to England… what have we learned?

I’ve been away on hol­i­day for the past 2½ weeks and haven’t had chance to write about the crick­et.  Dur­ing that time there have been 2 more Ashes test matches and Eng­land have exten­ded their lead to 3–0.  Hav­ing been away from all the talk­ing heads I haven’t heard what they have to say, so here are some of my own thoughts, unin­flu­enced by the pundits.

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0Hotspot Snickometer Hawkeye DRSA growing number of bad DRS decisions…

So, the intriguing 1st Ashes Test at Trent Bridge con­tin­ues to be excit­ing with no clear win­ner emer­ging as yet.  How­ever I want to look back to a poten­tially key moment of the game — the “not out” decision giv­en to Aus­trali­a’s Agar.  Let me be clear — no fault can be laid on any of the play­ers or on-field umpires — only on the DRS sys­tem and the umpire man­aging it.  There have been sev­er­al wrong decisions in this Test match and in the recent cham­pi­ons trophy, lets look at each of them in turn.… Read Full Article